# What means "git config bla ~/"? 6 messages from 2017-10-02 to 2017-10-04. Participants: rpjday@crashcourse.ca, René Scharfe, Jonathan Nieder, Junio C Hamano, Matthieu Moy. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/46880 ## rpjday@crashcourse.ca, 2017-10-02 10:13 Subject: What means "git config bla ~/"? Message-ID: <20171002061303.Horde.SL92grZCqTRV9oQkBFPELQ7@crashcourse.ca> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20171002061303.Horde.SL92grZCqTRV9oQkBFPELQ7%40crashcourse.ca ``` i'm sure i'm about to embarrass myself but, in "man git-config", OPTIONS, one reads: --path git-config will expand leading ~ to the value of $HOME, and ~user to the home directory for the specified user. This option has no effect when setting the value (but you can use git config bla ~/ from the command line to let your shell do the expansion). what's with that "git config bla ~/"? is this some config keyword or something? rday ``` ## René Scharfe, 2017-10-02 14:06 Subject: Re: What means "git config bla ~/"? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/dd28de03-9286-d5aa-3f00-9f6b7a85d71b%40web.de In-Reply-To: <20171002061303.Horde.SL92grZCqTRV9oQkBFPELQ7@crashcourse.ca> ``` [When I try to reply to rpjday@crashcourse.ca then my SMTP server says "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable invalid DNS MX or A/AAAA resource record.", so I'm replying only to the list.] Am 02.10.2017 um 12:13 schrieb rpjday@crashcourse.ca: > i'm sure i'm about to embarrass myself but, in "man git-config", > OPTIONS, one reads: > > --path > > git-config will expand leading ~ to the value of $HOME, and ~user to > the home directory for the specified user. This option has no > effect when setting the value (but you can use git config bla ~/ from > the command line to let your shell do the expansion). > > what's with that "git config bla ~/"? is this some config keyword or > something? "bla" represents any configuration option that you want to change. It is not literally a keyword recognized by git config. You could replace it with "foo", if that helps. The comment in parentheses reminds readers that shells like bash do tilde expansion for command line arguments. Consider the following command: $ git config format.outputDirectory ~/patches Your shell rewrites "~/patches" to "/home/rpjday/patches" (or similar, depending on your user name and home directory) before actually executing git config. So even though git config doesn't expand ~ in option values you'll still get a result like this afterwards: $ git config format.outputDirectory /home/rpjday/patches René ``` ## Jonathan Nieder, 2017-10-02 17:13 Subject: Re: What means "git config bla ~/"? Message-ID: <20171002171300.GP19555@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20171002171300.GP19555%40aiede.mtv.corp.google.com In-Reply-To: <20171002061303.Horde.SL92grZCqTRV9oQkBFPELQ7@crashcourse.ca> ``` Hi, rpjday@crashcourse.ca wrote: > i'm sure i'm about to embarrass myself but, in "man git-config", > OPTIONS, one reads: > > --path > > git-config will expand leading ~ to the value of $HOME, and ~user > to the home directory for the specified user. This option has no > effect when setting the value (but you can use git config bla ~/ > from the command line to let your shell do the expansion). > > what's with that "git config bla ~/"? is this some config keyword > or something? No need to be embarrased. Here "bla" is a placeholder. That is, for example, I can run git config --global include.path ~/.config/git/more-config or git config --global include.path $HOME/.config/git/more-config to cause [include] path = /home/me/.config/git/more-config to be added to my global configuration. The expansion of ~ or $HOME is performed by my shell, not Git. For comparison, if I had run git config --global include.path '~/.config/git/more-config' then that would cause [include] path = ~/.config/git/more-config to be added to my global configuration, but it would still have the same effect at run time, since Git is also able to expand ~ to my home directory. The wording comes from commit 1349484e341a3ec2ba02a86c8fbd97ea9dc8c756 Author: Matthieu Moy Date: Wed Dec 30 17:51:53 2009 +0100 builtin-config: add --path option doing ~ and ~user expansion. I agree with you that it is less clear than it could be. Ideas for clarifying it? Thanks, Jonathan ``` ## Junio C Hamano, 2017-10-03 00:08 Subject: Re: What means "git config bla ~/"? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/xmqqfub1m6u5.fsf%40gitster.mtv.corp.google.com In-Reply-To: <20171002171300.GP19555@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com> ``` Jonathan Nieder writes: >> what's with that "git config bla ~/"? is this some config keyword >> or something? > ... > > I agree with you that it is less clear than it could be. Ideas for > clarifying it? Yeah, if it were git config section.var ~/some/thing that would be far clearer than "bla" that what we see is a mere placeholder. Another obvious option is to remove the parenthetical comment. Or "(but you can give values without quoting and let your shell expand it)", without a confusing sample command that proved not to help very much. ``` ## Matthieu Moy, 2017-10-03 11:45 Subject: Re: What means "git config bla ~/"? Message-ID: <1964024229.332266.1507031152104.JavaMail.zimbra@matthieu-moy.fr> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/1964024229.332266.1507031152104.JavaMail.zimbra%40matthieu-moy.fr In-Reply-To: ``` "Junio C Hamano" writes: > Jonathan Nieder writes: > >>> what's with that "git config bla ~/"? is this some config keyword >>> or something? >> ... >> >> I agree with you that it is less clear than it could be. Ideas for >> clarifying it? > > Yeah, if it were > > git config section.var ~/some/thing > > that would be far clearer than "bla" that what we see is a mere > placeholder. Agreed. > Another obvious option is to remove the parenthetical comment. > > Or "(but you can give values without quoting and let your shell > expand it)", without a confusing sample command that proved not to > help very much. I prefer your "section.var" proposal above. I think people who really understand shell quoting do not need the explanations, and others probably need the example. While we're there, the formatting is also wrong ('' quoting, while we normally use `` quoting for shell commands). Sounds like a nice microproject for my students :-). A patch should follow soon. -- Matthieu Moy https://matthieu-moy.fr/ ``` ## Junio C Hamano, 2017-10-04 04:01 Subject: Re: What means "git config bla ~/"? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/xmqqd163ftng.fsf%40gitster.mtv.corp.google.com In-Reply-To: <1964024229.332266.1507031152104.JavaMail.zimbra@matthieu-moy.fr> ``` Matthieu Moy writes: > "Junio C Hamano" writes: > >> Jonathan Nieder writes: >> >>>> what's with that "git config bla ~/"? is this some config keyword >>>> or something? >>> ... >> git config section.var ~/some/thing >> ... > > I prefer your "section.var" proposal above. I think people who really understand shell quoting do not need the explanations, and others probably need the example. > > While we're there, the formatting is also wrong ('' quoting, while we normally use `` quoting for shell commands). > > Sounds like a nice microproject for my students :-). A patch should follow soon. OK, thanks. Lest we forget, this is #leftoverbits for now. ```